my friend from Japan recorded some episodes of Japanese TV onto a DVD-R using a DVD recorder that attaches to his TV (no computers involved here). of course, they dont play on my R1 DVD player, for whatever reason, but what actually concerns me is that the discs appear to have no files on them. despite the fact that i can easily see that something has been recorded to the disc by physically looking at the bottom of it, when i insert it in my DVD-ROM, windows reports that its empty. i even switched my DVD-ROM to region 2 to see if that made a difference, despite the fact that i wasnt yet trying to play any video from it, and it still had no files. my friend claims that it his recorder works fine for recording and viewing his recroded shows. since i have no region 2 or recording hardware at all, i have a few questions:

-should i be able to see any files on the DVD with my DVD-ROM, if not why? is it a regional thing or related to the method of its authoring?

-if the DVD wasnt authored by a corporation, wouldnt it be ALL region anyway?

alright, i went to another computer with a burner and with nero, and it can see that theres media there and can see the tracks as well as the amount of data, but i still have no way of seeing any kind of file system. for some reason, i made an image of the DVD then burned the image to a new DVD-R, but all it did was make another disc with invisible data… any ideas on where i should go from here?

i tried opening the recorded DVD as if it was a multisession, and Nero 6 asked me which track i wanted it to continue the session on, but none of the 3 tracks were selectable and therefore the OK button was always greyed out and i couldnt go on.

i gave isobuster a try when i last had access to a pc with a burner (before you mentioned it dicer), and it basically gave me the same info that nero did, showed me the tracks, how much data they had, starting points, etc. isobuster did however give me options similar to those in the attached image. the image itself is actually me at my dvd-burnerless comp trying to imitate the situation. when i was at the burner comp, should i have extracted the User or RAW data??? would either of those have given me usable files??? i didnt have much faith in the situation at that point and chose not to pursue any of those avenues…

Under Track in isobuster you didnt see ISO or UDF? Clicking on either of these would have given you a list of files. Always worked on any disk I’ve tried including screwed up/unfinalised VR and packet written and even disks where the burn failed midway.

ISObuster has never failed me on any disk which is physically readable, if the data is there you can get it. If the disk is poor quality or very badly burnt then you can probably kiss the data goodbye.

Obviously try the disk in another drive if possible (with isobuster too).

well, ive tried using isobuster a bit more, but i cant seem to get anything from the disc… i tried to “scan for file system” and “scan for UDF” or something along those lines, but got nothing. maybe its me, maybe its not, but i know something’s there and it seems it could be easier.

you see, i scanned 1 of the discs with Infinidyne’s CD/DVD Diagnostic and it turned up 3 VOBs without a hitch. great! however, i was using the shareware version which only allows scanning, no copying of the data…

therefore, im looking for a program similar to that, preferably freeware if possible, that can recover the data from my unfinalised DVDs.

normally, i’d just keep at it with isobuster, since im not a noob, but im using a computer at a net cafe, which means i have to pay for the time i spend on it, and while im waiting for the crappy 4x DVD burner to scan sector after sector (in other words, waiting forever), i have to sit there and stare at it. which is why i want something more guaranteed before i go back to that darn place.